Celebrity Smackdown: Tom Cruise and Scientology

It’s Wednesday and if you know CoupleDumb, we need to do a smackdown! But, who do we smackdown during therapy week? Would we smack Freud? Hell no! Sigmund Freud is the forefather of modern psychology and, despite the obvious chauvinistic qualities to his theories, his developmental stages still hold true and were the model for further theories. So we had to scourge the world for an appropriate target. Who out there has disparaged the practice of psychology? Who has dismissed dysfunction and diagnoses as quackery? Who, in a very glib fashion, stated that psychiatry in general is destructive and abusive? If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last few years you know we are talking about Scientology’s boy-toy Tom Cruise. You’re wondering, ‘Hey guys aren’t you afraid they are going to sue you and harass you and have a dingo steal your baby?’ CoupleDumb does not back down and our answer to that is ‘Bring it ON!’

Lee says: If you ever have a free minute, look Scientology up and read about it (especially read the part about sex). Was this church created when a burning bush talked to an adopted Jew/Egyptian? No. Was the church created when the son of God was nailed to a cross? No. Was the church created when a 35 year old woke up from a meditation with snails all over his head? No. This church was created by a hack Sci-Fi writer who also created a form of psychotherapy. The guy couldn’t get published and when he did, the AMA and the APA bashed him. Bitter, L.Ron?

Should I talk about Xenu and the thetans and all the other weird shit these guys believe in? No. This is therapy week and if it weren’t for all the paranoid shit they espouse and their condemnation of psychiatry, I think many psychotherapists would be Scientologists. The idea of consciously reliving traumatic events in order to free themselves of them is what most of us do on a daily basis with our clients. We do it without e-meter, talk of alien life forms or secrecy. We also do this with the defective people or as we would say, those with diagnoses.

Tom, dude, what were you thinking? You are the perfect poster child because in my professional psychological opinion, you are a fucking fanatic! The worse part Tom is that since you have a soap box and microphones all around, you are dangerous. Your religion is your business. I have no quarrel with people who believe differently than me. However, when you shout your beliefs from rooftops as if they are the ultimate truths, then you are asking for a debate. However, you Scientologists are a bunch of pussies who can’t seem to debate something without getting pissy and litigious. If I disagree with you and am vocal about it, I get sued. If someone challenges your statements, you call them glib and pull the ‘you don’t know man’ and ‘I know the truth’ bullshit that seems to be the allure and basis of your so-called religion.

Tom, I hate to pop your bubble but in reality, you had some good therapy and paid way too much for it. You feel good because unlike most people out there, you have dealt with some of your issues of the past. However, instead of being ‘clear’ you filled it up with arrogance. And as a woman who had post partum depression I would have told you to stick your vitamins up your ass!

I have nothing against people who find their truth. I applaud that and encourage people to deal with their traumas. But if you want to do it, pick a better writer than the dude who wrote ‘Battlefield Earth’. I hear Ray Bradbury has a cult too.

Paul says: I personally follow Isaac Asimov. Yes, I am a member of the church of the big As(s). And Lee is our godd-ass.

But Scientology also does many very good. No, I am not the next poster-boy for that bunch. I left the group almost three decades ago. What Scientology does do is aid improve awareness, especially spiritual awareness. For me, that benefit helped me in school, immensely. For an artist friend, it helped him create paintings in hours for what might have taken weeks. Before Scientology, conceptually I had usually thought of myself being a spiritual being in a temporary body. With Scientology counseling, that reality became vividly clear. Exterior with full belief. Performing miracles from the magnitude of those performed by Moses. And most interestingly, I found I understood Christianity far additional totally than I ever had.